Belief in God needs a definition for God. The mythical definition- a man in the clouds- I reject. But how do you approach a definition?
Think about what is most important. This quickly goes to family, but there are more important things than that. Air is more important, because if there wasn't air, there would be no family.
More than air, we really need a planet and gravity.
If we keep going, what we quickly get to is the fundamental laws of physics. We need the initial conditions that support existence, time and space.
Here, we could quickly narrow our focus to physical laws, but that would leave out a crucial feature of existence, and that is consciousness.
Yes, there's a debate about whether consciousness is caused by physical laws or whether it represents something non-physical (ie- a soul, etc). That's a very abstruse debate that, for now, we'll just set aside.
Regardless of the debate, we need to keep in mind that the very fundamental nature of existence, the ground of being that includes all the physical laws, the planets and atmosphere and everything that enables family and Glen himself to exist- that fundamental nature ALSO INCLUDES a sense of self, awareness, consciousness. (Glen and his family aren't that important if they aren't also all conscious.)
So, the most important thing then is the fundamental ground of being, which includes the physical laws of the universe and consciousness itself.
That's a mouthful. Let's repeat it just for fun: the fundamental ground of being, which includes the physical laws of the universe and consciousness itself.
Since it's a mouthful, but it's also the most important thing, then it's useful to give it a name. That's what we do with other mouthfuls. Instead of saying "The thing I get in and drive to work with," we say "car."
So, instead of saying that the most important thing is "the fundamental ground of being, which includes the physical laws of the universe and consciousness itself," it's reasonable to condense it to a single word. I don't object to using the word "God" to refer to the most important thing I can think of any more than I object to using the word "car" to refer to the thing I get in to drive to work.
And, since we capitalize the word Arkansas as a specific place or thing, I have no problem capitalizing a reference to the all-encompassing ground of being.
For fun, let's go a little deeper.
The thing that is truly the most important thing that we can think of is the thing we are most thankful for. If we ruminate for a bit, it strikes us that we are so, SO damn lucky. It could so easily have been different. If the universal gravitational constant varied by less than 1%, matter would not be able to cohere in any more complex form than a molecule. And, if just the right chain of events didn't line up, if the right 1/250,000,000 sperm didn't line up with the right 100,000 eggs for each conception of your ancestors going back all the way to the dinosaurs, and even back to the origin of life, if anything was off, you wouldn't be here.
What could be more unlikely? Ruminate for even a minute, and you might shake in awestruck sublimity. We should be so, SO thankful that this all came to be. In fact, that act of expressing thanks feels good, it puts things in perspective, it gives more depth and feeling to the simple experience of looking around the room. The table, chairs walls, the computer, the skin of your hands- it's all made of ancient, ancient matter, 15 billion years old, held together in delicate balance by forces that are just perfectly in tune, and all of it manifests in your awareness, including your sense of self, and that self is not alone, but gets to share this experience with other selves. It makes everything that is said on Fox News seem so utterly insignificant that you turn it off and just marvel at the wonder of it all.
And there's even more.
Think of the alternative of existence- nothingness. What if the universe never existed, if there was no big bang? Heidegger thought this was the most interesting question- Why is there something rather than nothing? It turns out , it's actually impossible to conceive of nothingness. The simple expression "Nothing exists" doesn't make any sense, because existence is the opposite of nothingness. "Nothing" cannot exist. If ____ exists, the only thing that can't go in the blank is the word nothingness. So nothingness can't be.* More than that, you can't refer to it or point to it. You can't talk meaningfully about nothingness any more than you can talk meaningfully about unicorns. They only exist as abstract concepts in our heads with no real basis in reality.
So if nothing can't be, then something must be. Existence is mandated. There is no alternative.
There is even more.
Words that are concepts, like "car" or "God," only have meaning in a language if we all agree on what the concept refers to. When I use the word "car," it only has meaning if others agree that it represents a certain type of object. And that process of classifying a type of object, of setting it apart from other objects, depends necessarily on the existence of other objects. All classifications have meaning only by being set apart from something else. The word "car" only has meaning in relation to "not car." The word "car" is useful as a word because it distinguishes the lump of metal in my garage from all the other lumps of metal in my garage. If you say "Please take the car out of the garage and wash it," the word "car" functions to make sure I don't wash the truck or the lawnmower. Words only have meaning in relation to what they are not, their opposites. The word "car" only has meaning if we also, simultaneously understand "not car." The word "good" can only be understood if we also understand "not good," or "bad." If there was only "good" and no "bad," then the word "good" would have no meaning. For example, the word "crow" distinguishes a certain type of bird from all the other birds. But if all birds were crows, the word "crow" would have no meaning because it would not distinguish that type of bird.
So, to have any meaning at all, all concepts must distinguish themselves from something else. No concept can have any meaning at all if there is not something that it is set apart from.
But, when we entertain the concept of the totality of all that is, what does it stand out against? What are we distinguishing it from? If "car" only has meaning in relationship to "not car," then "totality of all that is" only has meaning in relationship to "not totality of all that is." But as we've seen, "not totality of all that is" is "nothingness." And nothingness can't exist. Nothingness can't be. There simply is no referent against which the totality of all that is can be set against. Fascinatingly, the expression "the totality of all that is" is in fact meaningless.
Here's a quick thought experiment. Imagine the big bang, an explosion of expanding space and time. Like a balloon expanding, there is a leading edge. Earth is inside this balloon, and when we look out from the earth with a good telescope, we can see the balloon edge. It's called the cosmic microwave background. Now imagine you are outside the balloon, outside the leading edge of the expanding universe. Where are you? Are you floating in space as you watch the expanding universe? There's no space, because space was created in the big bang itself. If you are looking at the universe, how does the light get to your eyes? It can't, because the edge of the universe is the farthest that light or anything else has expanded to. It's not only impossible to be outside the universe, it doesn't even make sense to image you're outside it.
So if nothingness can't exist, then there isn't even nothingness outside of the universe, outside the totality of all that is. There's just the totality of all there is, and that's it. There is no "not the totality of all that is" because that is "nothingness," which doesn't exist.
But, since there is no such thing as "not the totality of all that is," then the phrase "the totality of all that is" is as meaningless as the word "good" without any "bad."
The first line of the Tao Te Ching- "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao." The Tao is Taoism's word for "the totality of all the is," and the first line of the bible of Taoism starts it right off by saying that the word "Tao" doesn't really work. The first verse concludes "Mystery of all mysteries, the door to all wonders." The fact that you cannot speak of, you cannot indicate, you cannot refer to the totality of all that is, the fact that any word you use will immediately miss the point means that the totality of all that is cannot be known logically. It cannot be understood with conventional, discursive means. If cannot be known completely with telescopes and science and language, because it cannot ever be stuffed into a class that is set apart from other classes. If it can be known at all, it must be investigated by other means than the means we typically use to know things.
I believe in the Tao, but I recognize that it is necessarily a flawed concept. And by recognizing that flaw, I am even more interested in exploring the most important thing that there is. I recognize that conventional tools of knowing and learning will not work. That is what spirituality is, the use of a different set of tools to learn about and know the world. To dive into the different schools of thought, the different paths, the different techniques.
To wrap this up, there are lots, LOTS of misguided spiritual paths and techniques. Just because there are lots of wrongheaded ideas doesn't mean everything is wrong.
On the flip side, any successful technique CANNOT be a logical technique.
On the other hand, just because it is not logical doesn't mean it is not scientific because the process is still an experimental one. You do the experiment to learn and understand the Tao, the totality of all that is, God, and then you talk to other masters of these experiments and see what they think.
On the other hand, that talking will be a strange kind of talking, because the words don't really work. When referring to the totality, those masters all agree that the words are only partial. From our perspective, not being masters, this talk sounds like circular mumbo jumbo. We hear phrases like "when you realize the totality of all that exists, the sky turns into a blue pancake and falls on your head."
On the other hand, just because someone is putting out a lot of strange talk doesn't mean they're a spiritual master.
*Suppose there were nothing. Then there would be no laws; for laws, after all, are something. If there were no laws, then everything would be permitted. If everything were permitted, then nothing would be forbidden. So if there were nothing, nothing would be forbidden. Thus nothing is self-forbidding. Therefore, there must be something. -Why Does the Word Exist? Jim Holt
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